Something very strange happened the year my daughter turned nine. The news mostly ignored it, so I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if you hadn’t heard about it. I don’t think the news really knew what to make of it. It was May Fourteenth, and I lived in a quiet suburb outside Washington D.C. with my wife Danielle and daughter Dani. (Dani isn’t named for her mother, she’s actually named after a brand of yogurt. I’m not terribly fond of it myself, but Dani loves it.)
The alarm went off at the usual time that morning, exactly way to early. The first thing Danielle said to me was ‘hrmph.’ The second thing she said to me was “Today is Dani’s birthday,” except she was noticably less coherent. Today Dani turned nine, and Danielle turned twenty nine for the eighth time. The coincidences ended there, however, as it was not also my birthday. I’m certain there are a great many other people born on May Fourteenth, but I was not one of them. I often wished I was; perhaps then I would be allowed to share Dani’s party like Danielle did. She got valentines and mother’s day, too, while all I got was the red-headed step child of national holidays. Father’s day. I slapped the sleep button and rolled out of bed. Danielle was already asleep again. She hated waking up, unless she got to do it every seven minutes for two hours.
It was five thirty am, and it was still dark outside, even after I finished in the bathroom. No sane person got up this early. I looked out the window at our quiet street full of quiet houses and quiet yards with guiet trees and little quiet mailboxes, and my very noisy neighbor already up with her flock swarming around her.
I wondered if the woman ever slept, or if she ever took off that house gown. It had blue and brown polka dots and I couldn’t tell which were stains. She had five children and four of them orbitted her at the moment. They flowed down her driveway to meet the paperboy at the curb, like she did every morning.
The alarm went off again. Danielle slept through it, like she did most mornings. I flicked it off. I would let her sleep for a while, then kiss her awake or something equally romantic. I brushed her hair away from her face and took a moment to enjoy the shape of her under the blanket.
I padded downstairs on bare feet, dodging toys and knick nacks and animals I couldn’t see. It was far too early for my daughter to be awake, but I heard her in the living room as I came down the stairs. I deftly avoided the squeaking stair by jumping over it, and stepped on her roller skates instead. I crashed down the last five stairs and sprawled across the hardwood in the entrance way, and landed such that I had a clear view into the living room. Dani pulled her head out from under the couch. Her eyes grew until they overlapped her ears.
“Looking for birthday presents?”
She looked quilty, just for a moment, in that odd way kids manage to admit they were being bad without doing anything at all. It might have been the carefully wrapped package in her hands.
“You know better. Besides, that one is for your mother.”
Dani glanced at the box, then stuffed it back under the couch as if hiding it again changed what she had been doing. I struggled to my feet and kicked her roller skates away. My back ached. It had a dent in it roughly the shape of a lunch box. I say roughly, because falling on the lunch box had bent it and it was not now entirely lunch box shaped itself. I rubbed at it, and kicked the lunch box over by the roller skates. The awful things had tried to kill me on several occasions and had managed it once, (A story for another time, I’m afraid.) this time I resolved to do away with them once and for all. As soon as Dani was on the bus, I would dispose of them in the most horrendous way I could imagine. Finally, a suitable use for my wood chipper.
“Since you’re up,” I said, “ready for breakfast?”
Dani said nothing, she just went into the kitchen and sat at the table. Best to let her stew a bit, waiting for the scolding. Maybe I’d be able to get out of giving it. I pulled cereal from the cupboard. Something with extra bran for her and extra sugar for me, and milk from the fridge. I should mention now that this was a Friday, and we generally do our dishes on Sunday. Typically, we have just enough dishes to last the week, so there is no reason to wash them more often. Unfortunately, I had had a bit of a row with Danielle the week before which ended in three salad bowls and a porceline hotdog holder being broken against my face. This had the direct consequences that we ate salad from cereal bowls, and also that I now could not find a cereal bowl.
I glanced at the sink, but that’s it, just a glance. It was full of menacing dishes. They looked back at me with greasy eyes daring me to try and wash them. I did not even know where the brush was. In the bottom of the sink, most likely. I tried to size the dishes up from the corner of my eye. The dishwasher loomed open, with it’s guts spilled out across the floor. I intended to fix it, eventually. In the mean time, dishes were done the hard way. The same way most chores were done in my house, by yelling at Dani until she did them.
I mused over the cereal and the milk for a moment, long enough to realize I didn’t have any clean spoons either. “Well,” I said. “Nothing we can do about it, is there? Open up.”
I poured cereal into Dani’s mouth, then milk. She chewed for a bit, with milk running down her chin, then we repeated the process a few times until she had devoured what I estimated to be a bowls worth.

I went to get the paper. Dani tagged along. Neighbor Lady was still outside, with her four daughters, like four identicle robots. The badges flowing down their sashes gleamed in the morning twilite. I pretended I did not see her, and hoped she would get the point. I had miscalculated. I had not realized that having Dani there would draw her the way can openers attrack cats and homeless people.
Neighbor Lady looked up from murdering innocent weeds and stalked across her yard towards me. He gaggle of girl scouts arranged themselves behind her by order of height (and thus also by order of age and order of badge-count) and stared at me in that adorable and frightening way that always tricked me into buying cookies.
“Hello, Dan,” she said. That’s me, by the way. Daniel Danson. “How are you today?”
I searched for the ulterior motive in her words. I knew there was one, but often I could not see it until it was too late to extricate myself. But Neighbor Lady did not give me a chance to properly answer. She shifted her attention immediately to Dani.
“And how are you today, dear?”
So it was going to be that again, was it? The girl scouts also removed their attention from me. I was happy to have the urge to pull out my wallet removed, but dismayed to see my daughter wither under their glare.
“Fine,” Dani sqwuaked.
The girl scouts folded around Dani, overwhelming in their perfect uniforms. “Have you thought about becoming a girl scout?” Neighbor Lady asked.
“Not really,” Dani said. Wrong answer. I had to do something, I had to rescue her before Neighbor Lady devoured her, or worse, convinced her that the girlscouts would be a good idea.
“She doesn’t really like those sorts of things,” I barged in.
“Oh, it’s mostly arts and crafts now. None of that camping stuff.”
“Yes, that’s the part she doesn’t like.” Dani made the appropriate faces to demonstrate her agreement.
“You know, she really should spend more time with girls her own age.”
“What, you have something against tom boys?”
“Well, without a female influence,”
“What are you talking about?” I interuppted. “We really aren’t interested, I’m sorry.” I’ve found that if I’m nice to her, she often goes away of her own accord. But this was not likely to be one of those days. I could see her pushyness rising up from her bowels, where it was usually put to a productive use, and flowing across her face.
I grabbed my newspaper and fled. I was vaguely aware of Dani pounding the pavement behind me. The pushy erupted in a flurry of ‘I really thinks’ and ‘it would probably be best ifs’ that struck our back sides like high calibur rounds. I staggered and sprawled across the sidewalk. Dani tugged at my arm, vainly trying to pull me back to my feet.
I glanced to my left, at one of the mud puddles that dotted my yard (I never seemed to have the time for yard work anymore) “You know what your problem is?” I asked Neighbor Lady. “You have no sense of fun at all.” I scooped and flung in the same motion, and plastered mud across the youngest girl scout’s face. The girl shrieked and fell.
Dani and I ran for cover as the remaining scouts returned fire with their automatic weapons. We dove behind the stoop as mud splattered across it. I spared a glance over and almost had to wash my hair because of it. Years of this pointless war had turned us into hardened soldiers. I looked over the weapons at our disposal. Mud. Today was a good day to get messy. “We need a plan, Colonel.”
“I say we throw mud at them.”
I thought about that for a moment. “I like it.”
I looked out from behind the stoop. One of the girls was standing out in the open, unprotected. Dani and I must have had the same thought, because we threw as one. The girl never stood a chance. She twisted about in the air and toppled into a mud puddle. But where were the others? I glanced around for them, and discovered to my horror that they had flanked us. I saw them as they threw, and put myself between the mud and Dani.
It plastered across my chest and I fell gasping against the stoop.
“General! General!” Dani shouted.
“Listen,” I gasped. “Colonel Pumpkin; if I don’t make it, I want you to know it’s been an honor servivng with you.”
“You’re going to be fine,” she said. “It’s just a flesh wound.”
“Run. Run now while you still can.”
“No! I won’t leave you!”
I saw the two remaining girl scouts approaching us, heavily armed. “Pumpkin!” I shouted and pointed. Dani turned and fired, and one of the girls went down screaming. The other flung two handfulls of mud at Dani.
Dani slumped back against me and lay still, half her face gone under a mud mask. “Colonel Pumpkin?” I asked, quietly at first. “Pumpkin?” I shouted. “Pumpkin?” I shook her and wailed. The sun rose on our grisly scene, Colonel Pumpkin dead in my arms. I felt my own life leaking through my wounds. The mud around us slowly turned red and sticky.
A shadow fell over me. It was the enemy, General Neighbor Lady, but I didn’t care. Nothing she could do to me now would be worse.
“I’ll defeat you, General Lady,” I said. “We won’t go quietly into the night! We will stand and fight!”
“I’ll send you,” she said. “the cleaning bill.”
I was wrong. So terribly wrong. I shouted at the heavens, I would get my revenge. But first.
“You need a bath,” I told Dani.
She wiped the mud off her face. “No I don’t.”

I listened at the bathroom door until I heard water running, then I dragged myself upstairs to change. It was then that I realized I had not eaten breakfast myself. While Dani had chewed her bran, I had not devoured my own dose of sugar filled marshmallow charms. I do not drink coffee. I’m quite proud of that, actually. But the adult body just doesn’t have the same energy producing capabilities of the young, or perhaps I had just been spoiled by easily accesible carbs. In short, when I say I dragged myself upstairs, I mean it quite literally. I may have taken a nap on the landing.
When at last I changed from my frilly sleeping gown into sensible slacks and a wrinkled shirt, Danielle was still sleeping. “You didn’t iron,” I said.
“Hrmph,” she replied.
I smoothed my shirt with my hands. It didn’t work at all. “I’m off to work. Dani’s in the bath.”
“Hrmph,” Danielle said.
“Don’t forget to get up today, okay?”
“Hrmph.”
I bent over her and kissed her. She didn’t hrmph at that, at least.
The bath noises were over when I went back downstairs. “Don’t miss the bus!” I shouted through Dani’s bedroom door as I passed. She shouted something back, muffled. I peaked in and she shrieked, also muffled, apparently by the shirt stuck on her head. She fumbled towards the door and fell into it, effectivly slamming it in my face, which I suppose was what she had intended to do anyway.

A half hour later, I was sitting in traffic. It was something like seven am when my cell phone rang the first time, but I couldn’t answer it because I was singing along to My Girl. It rang again soon after, and the radio was playing something I didn’t know the words too, and also the song was awful, so I went ahead and answered it. It was Dani.
She has her own cellphone. I thought it was a good idea at the time, it’s certainly important that she be able to reach me, since I leave before the bus comes, but shortly after I got it I discovered that not only could she reach me, but also many other people for about a thousand minutes a day. I never did figure out how she managed that, seeing as there are only one thousand four hundred forty minutes in a day. With only seven and a third hours left to sleep, it became clear that she must spend every waking moment on the phone. Since this is not the case, I surmise that she also talks in her sleep. Naturally, her phone only dials two numbers now. Mine, and 911.
“Iforgotmylunch,” she said all at once.
“What?”
“Iforgotmylunch!”
“Words! Talk in words!”
“I forgot my lunch…”
I took the phone away from my ear and glared at it. I was half way to work and stuck in traffic, and she’d forgotten her lunch box. I’d packed it and left it on the table, right next to her book bag. (An issue unto itself. Why did she need to haul all those books back and forth every day, if she hardly ever had homework? I don’t even remember having books in third grade. Couldn’t they leave them in the class room? It’s not like she didn’t sit at the same desk all day, every day, anyway. At least it was only for another month. Maybe she would de-stoop over the summer.) Or, I though I had, but as I considered it I realized that that had probably been yesterday. In fact, the last time I remembered seeing her lunch box was when I fell on it. Still hurt, too, she could just go without lunch.
Dani’s voice came as a little squeek from the cell phone. I put it back to my ear long enough to hear “SCHOOLISALMOSTSTARTINGINEEDMYLUNCHINEEDTOHANGUP” which hurt my ear, so I pulled it away and yelled at it from a distance. Some rude person in another car honked at me just then, so I had to repeat myself.
“Call your mother.”
“DAD!” Dani screamed back. Someone else honked, adding a little extra emphasis.
“Fine, fine, I’ll bring you something.” I hung up the phone.
Now, you may have noticed what I had not. I should also point out that when I am talking on the phone, I give it my full attention. I feel whomever has called me deserves my respect, if for nothing more than having the fortitude to call someone as awesome as I am. What you may have noticed was the people honking at me. I had also noticed this, and found it quite annoying. However, what I had not noticed was that I had crossed into oncoming traffic and was about to hit a very large minivan.
I noticed it very suddenly and swerved. The minivan also swerved, but a little too hard. It rolled past me in the way minivans are not meant to roll, that is, not on it’s wheels. My face was briefly illuminated by the reflection of an explosion in my rear view mirror. My mind connected this with the minivan, though I could not be sure and, honestly, I was far too busy not hitting the tank in front of me.
No, I am not using ‘tank’ to mean an especially large SUV, though some of them would certainly look nice with a turret and maybe a 20 millimeter. I mean a tank. An honest to God tank, with those things I said would look good on an SUV.
I did manage to avoid it, but learned shortly after that it was escorting a bus. A bus is a very large vehicle, and my car is not. The bus was also full of a baseball team, whose steroid enhanced bulk added greatly to the vehicle’s overall mass. I decided at that moment that I would rather strike the tank, but unfortunatly it was too late. My airbag punched me in the face like Mike Tyson, and I instinctivly covered my ears.
My head ringing, and not sure what had happened to the last thirty seconds, I stumbled away from my car. I was looking two ways at once because my eyes hadn’t quite agreed on which way was forward yet, and I’m not sure how I kept my feet. My car was a crumbled and dieing mess. Steam gushed from it’s front end and a pool of gasoline gathered under it’s ass. Someone was yelling at me to stay away from it, possibly because it was on fire but most likely because they were a jerk and couldn’t see how I had to be with my poor friend while she passed away.
The bus, however, was fine. Sure, it’s nose was a little red, and it had a dent in the corner that the bus driver was clucking at, as if her poor baby was going to die from some little scratch. While the bus licked it’s wounds I tore back to my car and rescued my cell phone, then remembered that I had actually gone over there to comfort her while she died. I felt tears on my cheeks, that jerk was probably crying on me or something. I hugged my baby’s steering wheel to my chest. This turned out to be fortunate, as it was no longer attached, and they were able to drag me away before she exploded.
The baseball team stood around looking annoyed and menacing, and alternated between glaring at me and enjoying the fireworks. The tank rolled to a stop some distance away and swivled it’s turret angrily.
“Are you okay?” someone asked.
“No, I’m Dan.”
“You should come over here.”
“I think I’d rather go over there.” I did not know where here was, but I have an important rule of thumb I often follow instinctivly and that is that anywhere I pick, ie, over there, is better than what someone else picked. Naturally, I wished to go over there, which happened to be the public library across the street. Of course, that meant going around the baseball team.
I attempted to circle them, slowly, as not to anger the bulls guarding their herd, but they seemed to think this was ‘fleeing the scene of an accident’ or some such nonsense and detained me. They detained me by sitting on me. Not all of them, just one, but he was a very large bull with arms the shape and flavor of hams. I squirmed under him to no avail. I chewed on his arms, which only annoyed him.
Eventually, a wail arose far down the road. I thought at first it might be me, I wanted to wail, but I discovered that my throat could not produce that exact tone. And then I realized that if my throat was free to try and make it I must not be making it. It turned out to be some sort of flashing vehicle, and now I’ll share a secret with you : Dinosaurs are aliens. I know this because I saw that ufo land beside the bus. It had flashing red and blue lights on top, and the rest was gleaming white and chrome. Now the man with ham arms let me up, and took me by both shoulders, and offered me to the ufo like some sort of sacrifice.
A seam appeared on the side of the ufo. It spread in both directions horizontally, then made a sharp turn and moved upwards. Little wisps of steam sprang from the crack, and a section of the ufo folded up like a hatch. (This particular turn of phrase is rather pointless, isn’t it? If it folded up like a hatch, it’s a hatch, why didn’t I just call it one and say it folded up?) A light came forth from the hatch and struck me. I squinted against it, and would have covered my eyes except that ham-arms had me pinned.
A shape appeared in the light. As you have probably guessed, it was a dinosaur. Specifically, it was a velociraptor. What you certainly did not guess what that this particular velociraptor was wearing a blue uniform with some sort of badge on her breast, and a gun on her hip, and had a rather fearsome looking notebook clutched between her talons. Did I mention that it was a she velociraptor? You can tell because of how their mouths curve.
The velociraptor looked around, then focused on me. I could see what she was thinking : yummy. I hoped that she preferred ham to chicken. I shied away, pressing myself into ham-arms, as she came closer.
“Were you driving that vehicle?” she asked, while pointing a claw at my dearly departed.
“Ye… yes,” I stammared. My bowels twisted in anticipation of her terrible claws. Those terrible claws clicked on the pavement as she walked around the accident scene, her forepaws tucked behind her back, still cluthing that notebook. She paused and wrote something sinister on it.
“I’d like to ask you some questions,” the velociraptor said. “Were you speeding?”
“What?”
“Were you driving over the speed limit?”
“Oh, I wasn’t driving. Do you think you can let me go, Ham-arms?”
Ham-arms glared at me, but, in my defense, he hadn’t actually told me his name. It also seemed to be a good idea to make sure the velociraptor knew his arms were made of delicious ham. He let me go, at least. A glare was a fair trade.
The velociraptor blinked at me. “What, then, were you doing?”
I held up my cell phone, both to distract her and so that she wouldn’t ask me any dumb questions like ‘How?’ or ‘Is she still in the burning car?’ after I said, “Talking to my daughter.”
“Yes, I have a daughter,” I continued before she could say anything else. “An entire family to look after, in fact. You really shouldn’t eat me.”
“What?”
“Please don’t eat me.”
My heart pounded in my chest. It would pound in yours too, if you were staring down a hungry velociraptor, and she was looking at you the way she looked at me. I couldn’t quite tell if she was annoyed or just starving. Niether seemed to be velociraptor states that were in my favor.
I had begun to shake. Finally my instincts overcame my natural indicision. I’m very glad it was a baseball team and not a football team, they only have to run for five seconds at a time, and there weren’t any running backs or left tackles to come after me. The velociraptor, however, was plenty fast. Her breath warmed my neck as I sprinted. At the time I thought she clawed me, but it turned out the searing pain in my chest was just my heart exploding.
The velociraptor roared behind me, and hooted into her alien communication device. Calling for more, no doubt. Their little ufos would surround me, and velociraptors would come pouring out, or worse. I could not imagine what could be worse than a velociraptor, and I did not want to find out.
The library loomed before me, three stories of old brick and new concrete. Used to be, when I was little and actually went to libraries, that this one was a nice old building. I didn’t appreciate it at the time, but since then someone came along and covered up the old building with a modern cement thing which was meant to look nice but actually looked pretty shitty. The urge to replace perfectly good buildings just because they were old will destroy our society one day, mark my words. Also, modern architecture kind of suck. Everyone knows this except the architects, who get awards for ‘best design utilizing chrome’.
I burst into the library and toppled over a cart of books. What fool left a full cart of books right inside the door? I hoped it wasn’t me. (Actually it turned out to be this gigantic bug, I’ll get to that.) I screamed into the front lobby place with it’s signs telling me to be quiet and it’s displays of children’s books that even small children thought were kind of lame. I screamed around a corner and between the first two shelves I saw. A gigantic bug told me to be quiet. (See, I told you I’d get to it.)
It would just have to take care of itself, though. I didn’t have time to worry about why there was a gigantic bug in a library telling me to be quiet. I pressed myself to the end of the book case and peered down the aisle at the velociraptor as she stalked past. She had one hand on her gun, and the other on her alien communication device which looks suspiciously like a walkie-talkie. She whispered into it, awful things about how good I tasted and how she needed backup right now because there was some guy fleeing her. I bet everyone fled her!
Maybe she had eaten ham-arms. He deserved it.
The velociraptor paused. She scanned the aisles with her beady eyes, searching, searching, for a tasty morsel. She tapped the giant claws on the back of her feet against the cold tile floor. Click. Click. Click. I tracked her as she clicked down the center aisle and turned between two shelves. She was about three shelves away, I judged. I quivvered against the shelf.
I peeked around the corner and watched her appear in the space along the librarie’s back wall. She looked over. I ducked back. I clutched desperately to the hope that I was fast enough, but the sudden flurry of clicks showed the lie. I realized with growing horror what that clicking meant. She was running. Running towards me. I scrambled up the shelf, my terror giving my limbs an undiscovered strength. Books showered around me and tumbled across the floor. I heard her below me as she reached the shelf, or more accurately, stepped on a book and slid into it.
The whole shelf shook. I was on top now, and I leapt to the next shelf. It rocked under me but stayed up. The velociraptor heaved herself onto the book case behind me. She slathered in hunger and shouted incoherent things at me. My book case wobbled and I very nearly fell. I did fall, but managed to only fall onto my ass instead of all the way to the floor. I grabbed the sides of the shelf. I needed something to throw. Something hard, perhaps something made of wood.
I scrambled down the length of the shelf, and hopped over the next aisle, trying to put as much space between myself and the horrible predator. I hopped another aisle, and she leapt. She did not just jump to the next shelf, or even the one after that. She leapt five aisles, and landed on the sixth shelf. If you’ve been keeping track, you know that I was currently on the fourth shelf. She passed all the way onto the other side of me.
Naturally I turned around and hopped the other direction. She leapt again, right back to where she was, and though the shelf rocked violently under her, she stayed on top. I could see where this was going, and I still needed something to throw at her.
Oh. Right. Library. I reached down and snatched a book off the shelf and flung it. It missed wide to the right, but it got her attention. She raised her forelimbs to ward of the astrology books I heaved. I happened to spot one with the title ‘A Reference for Writing Horoscopes’. It was nice and fat, but every page was blank, so I wrote my horoscope myself. “You shall be devoured by a velociraptor.” I never believed in that garbage; the book made a wonderful missile.
I threw another and another. The velociraptor staggered under my incredibly onslaught, and the book case lurched under her. It toppled, ever so slowly. Of course it fell into the other shelf, because if it didn’t it wouldn’t have knocked over all the others too, and then I wouldn’t have gone flying and landed in a pile of books. I shook them off and sprang to my feet. The velociraptor screamed at me from under a shelf. The gigantic bug was screaming at me, too. I turned and ran.
There was a back door, but it didn’t lead out of the library. It led into a graveyard. Decaying books stood everywhere in neat stacks like monuments to the shape they once had. I could hear them yearning to dig their roots into the soil and spread their leaves in the sky. Light shot in two beams from the little window in the corner and played with the everpresent dust. Bright little motes danced in the air like pixies, living in an enchanted forest.
I reached out and ran my hand over one square trunk. I sucked in the sweet smell of rotting wood and glue. I made sure the door was locked behind me. I moved slowly through the book graveyard, my eyes sliding over the horrible dismembered corpses of books half way through a repair. I couldn’t stand to look at them, they were so horrible, with no covers; their guts hanging out in the air.
The light beam struck a table. Motes of ash sprang off it, the pixies swarmed around it in droves. I brushed the pixies aside, something on the table caught my eye. It was a book. But it was unlike the other books laid to rest here. It was as beat up as them, it had as many tears, but it was not as old. No, it was much, much, older. It was bound in real leather, and the title was set into the front in leaf of gold. Some of the letters had flaked off, but I was able to read ‘Ho to mke brwnies’.
A cookbook! Sweet, I love to cook. I picked it up, and too my surprise, nothing surprising happened. I ran my fingers over the worn cover, I felt the way the binding was pulling away from the pages, just a little. The pages were that super-thin paper you find inside bibles, that feels so soft against your skin and has the foil on the edges. I wondered what sort of brownies it would teach me to make. Almond? Pecan? Banana? I hoped not, I hated bananas.
I would have opened it right there, except the door I had entered through jiggled. The velociraptor must have freed herself. Well, I’ll be damned, she wasn’t going to get my new cook book. Or eat me. Mustn’t forget that. The door jiggled again, and the knob turned. I held the cook book over my head, prepared to defend myself. The door opened, and I smacked the giant disgusting bug in the face.
I should have hit it harder, it would have saved me a lot of trouble later. It didn’t squish at all, which was a bit dissapointing. The velociraptor stood right behind the bug, but they were so surprised by my assualt that I slipped right past them and ran. I’d been doing a lot of that, hadn’t I? I’m not a coward, it’s just that she was a velociraptor. You understand.
I ran out of the library, but then I ran back in. Outside the library, I saw what was worse than a velociraptor. The thing that I did not believe existed before was discovered. It was a whole bunch of velociraptors. A half circle of ufos spread before the library, with two or three velociraptors crouching behind each. The tank was there too, I think it was hitting on the bus.
One velociraptor was scary enough, and, indeed, she was stalking towards me. The disgusting bug followed a safe distance behind her, rubbing it’s multifacetted eyes.
“On the ground!” The velociraptor shouted. She’d drawn her gun, though I don’t know what she could do with it that she couldn’t with her teeth. “On the ground!” she shouted again, so shrill this time that my brain automatically filtered her out. Luckily she motioned with the gun too, so I knew what she meant.
I didn’t see any way out now. Velociraptors outside. Velociraptor inside. I sank to the floor. The velociraptor pounced on me. I made a silent prayer to Bob. Bob was this guy I knew. He lived downtown, in a nice cardboard place on the corner of Indiana and Fifth, that the arcitects could learn a thing or too from. I prayed to him because he’d told me once that he was Jesus. You never know about these things, I didn’t want to take any chances with a velociraptor standing on my back.
Her claws closed around my wrists. Great, so she was going to play with me. She lifted me up and pushed me out of the library.
“You have a right to remain silent,” she said.
“What? You don’t like when your food talks back?”
“Anything you say can and will be used against you,” she continued.
“Can we not drag this out?” The circle of velociraptors outside relaxed as I emerged. Obviously they had been preparing for a chase. Some part of me was sorry I couldn’t offer it. “Maybe keep it private? You take me and do what you want, but avoid the feeding frenzy?”
The velociraptor said nothing. She pushed me towards one of the ufos. Her friends licked their chops. Oh, they wanted a piece of me alright. Where was the baseball team? I couldn’t see them. In their stomachs, no doubt.
“Why share me? Don’t I look tasty?”
She did not like that at all. She threw me into the ufo. Her claws came away and released me, but she slammed the door on me. Were they going to probe me before they tore me to pieces? I curled up around my cook book.
The town ran by outside the ufo. It glided over the pavement so smoothly I might have been sitting still while the town whirled around. We stopped at a squat little building with a giant star over the door. Obviously the alien velociraptors embassy. I wonder who had given them permission to move in, and to eat innocent citizens. I would have to remember not to vote for them next time.
I was led down a procession of sterile halls by slathering velociraptors then thrust into a tiny cage. It was about six feet by twelve feet. Bars closed one of the short ends, the other three walls were plain brick. A porceline shrine squatted opposite the barred end, lind up with the little door the velociraptors pushed me through. Well, so long as they were on the other side of the bars, they weren’t eating me.
Two bunks hung on the right hand wall. I tossed my cook book onto the nearer of the pair, because the other had a mime on it. The mime lounged on his back, with one leg propped up on the other knee and a cigarette hanging from his mouth. The mime blew out a puff of smoke that swirled perfectly in the air, then stopped suddenly and formed a table in mid air.
Maybe if I ignored the mime it would go away. I set about ignoring it. I made a donation at the altar of the porceline god. I sat on my bunk and thought of things to do with my cook book, such as hitting the mime with it or using it as a pillow. It did not make a very good pillow. Eventually I got up and went over to the bars.
“Hey! Hey!” I shouted at the especially fat velociraptor watching me. “Before you eat me, can I call my daughter or something? I’m supposed to be taking her lunch and she’s going to wonder where I am.”
The velociraptor glared at me around his newspaper. I did not know velociraptors could read.
“You’ve got my cellphone right there. Can I use it?”
He plucked my cellphone off his table and chucked it at me. It missed the bars and flew past me, and bounced off the mime. He must have deflected it somehow, it seemed to bounce of an invisible wall. I was too busy ignoring him to pay attention. I grabbed the phone and opened my contact list. I had forty seven contacts, but they were all Dani. I dialed the third one.
It rang four times and then Dani answered, and immediately shouted what at me. “You got me in trouble!” she said.
“It’s an emergency.”
“It’s never an emergency!”
“Then why do you always answer? Forget that. I won’t be able to bring your lunch.”
“What? Why not?”
I cupped my hand around the phone and whispered just in case the mime was an alien velociraptor spy. “I’m about to be eaten by alien velociraptors. They got me in a cage. Can you believe that?”
“Velociraptors?”
“Yeah, velociraptors. And they have these blue uniforms and guns and badges and stuff. And they fly around in ufos with red and blue lights.”
And then she hung up on me. I took a moment to stare in shock at the phone, and then I would have dialed her again to yell at her except the velociraptor guard snatched the phone back from me.
“Hey I’m not done with that!”
“One phone call,” he said, and proceeded to ignore me.
I was ignoring the mime. The velociraptor was ignoring me. I glanced over at the mime. “Are you ignoring the velociraptor?” The mime nodded. Perfect.
I moped about to the bunk and slumped against the wall. Eventually I got bored enough to actually read. I cracked the cook book open on my knee. Copyright 1976. Good vintage. The title page confirmed what I had gathered from the cover, it was indeed titled ‘How to Make Brownies’. The contents, however, confused me, so I skipped them and started reading chapter 1. (That’s odd in and of itself, what sort of cook book has chapters?)
It read;
The young brownie should be aged five to seven years before first initiation. The purpose behind the indoctrination is to produce an effective brownie; this section will lay out the guidelines for preparing a brownie for any obstacle she might face.
Part 1: Choosing your brownie.
The best brownies are made from girls who are adventurous and obedient. A proper balance must be had between these aspects. A girl who is too willful will not be content to follow orders; a girl who does not think for herself will be unable to improvise when your careful plans ultimately fail.
I put the book down. It was not a cook book. The mime finished his cigarette and started on another.
“So,” the mime said. I did not believe it at first. I looked all around but no one else where there. I even checked under the bunks and inside the toilet. Finally I looked at the mime.
“What you in for?” the mime asked.
“How’d you do that?”
The mime looked at me funny, which was usually how I looked at mimes.
“Mime’s can’t talk,” I said.
The mime sat up and leaned forward. He rested his forehead on an invisible wall. The smoke from his cigarette made the confines of his much smaller cell apparent, I could see now that he was in a little box that surrounded his bunk. “Just because we don’t talk doesn’t mean we can’t,” he explained. He had a thick french accent, the sacre’bleu kind, where his words dripped with snootiness and every syllable threatened to surrender to the next. “What’re ya in for?”
“They think I’m delicious, I guess.”
“What? Them?” The mime hooked a thumb at the guard.
“Yeah, the velociraptors.”
“Why couldn’t they have left me in here alone?”
“How should I know?”
“I wasn’t asking you.” The mime put his hands together as if he was holding an invisible harmonica and began to play. A sad sweet melody poured out from between his lips and filled our cell. “Me,” the mime said during a pause in the music. “I killed this guy,” he said in another pause.
Tears sprang to my eyes, the music was so pure and sad, like audial melancholy poured into the air.
“But he totally deserved it.”
“That’s so sad,” I wailed.
“I know, isn’t it? I’m just an innocent mime.”
“No, I mean the song.”
“That too. No, see this guy, he pulled a gun on me, so I shot him.” The mime put his fingers together like a gun and shot at the guard. The bang bounced around inside the cell and burst out into the hall, and the guard jumped and looked around. He peered at us for a moment, and paid special attention to the mime. The mime waved at him.
“I didn’t know it worked like that.”
“Thought it was all fake, huh?”
I rose from my bunk and walked over to the mime. I reached out and touched his invisible box. It tingled a little against my finger tips. “Honestly, yes. Always thought you were just strange french people.”
“I’m not french,” the mime said, “I’m canadian.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Hocky,” the mime said. “Look. You seem like a nice enough guy, you ever thought about being a mime?”
“No, I look awful in makeup.” I threw myself back onto my bunk. “I’ll just wait here until they come to eat me if you don’t mind.”
“That sounds terrible.”

I spent a rather long time in that cell doing nothing at all, an hour at least, so I’m going to take a moment to extrapolate on what I think happened somewhere else while I rotted. I don’t want to ruin the surprise, however, so I’m going to try and reveal as little as possible. I shall refer to the persons involved as Shadowy Figure One and Mrs. Winkerbottom. (If your name is Mrs. Winkerbottom, I apologize. Not for using it.)
Shadowy Figure One loomed on some sort of Shadowy Throne in a Shadowy Palace overlooking a Shadowy Land. Actually it was probably an easy chair in her living room. Mrs. Winkerbottom kneeled in front of her, by which I mean she sat in the opposite chair and sipped tea.
Mrs. Winkerbottom was distressed and the tea was meant to settle her stomach. She had come to Shadowy Figure One straight from the library.
“Is that better now?” Shadowy Figure One asked in a pleasant voice.
“Much,” Mrs. Winkerbottom probably replied. Then I assume she said “What’s troubling me is that when I went to the library, the book was missing.” I’m certain she phrased it differently, but if I had just said “It’s gone!” you would have no idea what I was talking about.
This news made Shadowy Figure One very distressed as well. She also had to drink some tea. “What happened to it?” she asked at last.
“I don’t know,” Mrs. Winkerbottom admitted in an incredulous voice. She was not used to not knowing things and didn’t have much practice saying so. “But the place was wrecked, books everywhere. There was a very handsome man in there just before me, escaping from ravenouse velociraptors.”
Shadowy Figure One leaned forward in her chair. “Who was this incredibly handsome man?”
“Daniel Danson.”
Shadowy Figure One gasped. Perhaps an organ played in the background. I was indeed incredibly handsome, so handsome I made her tingle inside. “The tom boy’s father?” she asked through her hand, which was busy keeping her fluttering heart from burtsting out her mouth.
“Yes, Daniel Danson, the most handsome man in the entire town.” I might be exagerating slightly.
“You know what this means,” Shadowy Figure One said in a forboding manner.
Mrs. Winkerbottom’s eyes grew as round as the delicate saucer clutched in her hand. “How forboding.”
“We must have her.”
“Oh my.”
“Yes!” Shadowy Figure One rose from her chair and turned to face the camera. “We must have Dani Danson. It would make me very happy if we had Dani Danson. Dani Danson, the daughter of the most handsome man in the entire town, who will hold my heart forever.”
“These are very good crepes.”
“Aren’t they? I got the recipe from a boating magazine of all places.”
And then they spoke about girly things like doiles for a while, and not about how handsome I was, which frankly is terribly boring, so I shaint impose it on you. But you should have an idea now of what I was about to find myself up against.

I was having a pleasant dream about there not being velociraptors when a velociraptor kicked me in the face. I shrieked and jumped off the bunk, but it was just a mime, not a velociraptor.
“Someone is here to see you,” the mime said.
I looked. Neighbor Lady stood outside the bars, next to the velociraptor guard. The door stood open. The mime stood next to me, his box stood around him. A lot of standing was being done.
“Dan, come on,” Neighbor Lady said. “I’ve paid your bail.”
“Bail?”
“Yes! And it was a lot, too. Resisting arrest, really?”
“So they aren’t going to eat me?”
“What? No. Don’t daddle, it’s a wonder you get along at all, you’re like a big child yourself.”
I stepped outside the cell and was not immediately devoured. Perhaps they would eat Neighbor Lady instead. She looked quite delicious in her too-small sweater pulled over her house gown. I was certain she would be quite hot if she wore something nice and let her hair grow out, but she had that short haircut house frows got to tell men that they couldn’t handle five kids and a hair style at the same time. Also she had five kids, and I didn’t want any part of that.
“What about the mime?” I asked her.
“Don’t worry about me,” the mime said, stepping out right behind me. “I’m just here for the free bed.”
“You know I’m only doing this because Dani called me,” Neighbor Lady said as we walked past rows of drooling velociraptors. The mime whistled.
“Her phone can only dial two numbers,” I pointed out.
“Trust technology against children? How silly.”
“Yeah mate,” the mime said. “I ‘member a time at the barby when me boi had this gameboy thing.” Apparently he was australian now.

I’ve got diffuse and specular lighting, reflection, refraction, and FSAA. On the list : Soft shadows, diffuse reflections, textures, and models.

I don’t care what your plate says. If you aren’t handicapped, don’t park in the space. If you’re driving a handicapped person around, and they aren’t getting out of the car, don’t park in the space. If your handicap is that you’re a fat ass, don’t park in the space. Park farther away. Or better yet, don’t go to the fucking grocery store. Fat ass.

Why the hell should they get the best spaces just because they don’t have legs or whatever, anyway? People with real handicaps don’t drive anyway, they don’t need no fucking special spaces. And then there’s all those times the parking lot is full, except for like fifty handicapped spaces right in the front. Are there going to be fifty handicapped people there at once? Have they ever been before?

And why the fuck is there a handicapped space at the skating rink?

I’m quite a good cook. Though, my only judge of my creations is myself. It’s entirely possible that they are gross, and I just like gross things. At any rate, they are better than these bacon-cheese-fry things I had today which were so awful they were good. Tasted nothing like bacon; charcoal, maybe.

So here is a recipe for beer-braised steak and noodles in garlic and Parmesan.

First, cook some noodles.
Next, braise your steak. This is dead simple. Get a frying pan, and pour some beer in it. I use Corona. Anything will work, but I recommend a malt. Different beers give different flavors, obviously. Don’t use the whole bottle, you’ll need it in a bit. Heat it up until it sizzles, then cook your steak in it. It should be nice and juicy and tender and delicious. If it’s not, well, you suck.
Take the steak out of the pan. Don’t pour out the mess. Keep it on the heat, sizzling away, and add some garlic. Add any other spices you want now. Cinnamon and Cayenne Pepper work well. Add some butter, and swish the pan until it melts. Now finally you get to add the Parmesan. Don’t be stingy, and keep the heat on and the swish going so it melts. Add some more of that beer if it gets to thick.
Now spread that sauce over your noodles and serve it with the steak. Delicious.

If you don’t know how to swish a pan, well. You just pick it up and shake it back and forth so the stuff inside swishes. Really, you should know that. Dumb ass.

So there I was writing in a file called ‘7.txt’, and I thought to myself, hey! It sure would be nice to know how many words I’ve written total! Naturally I also have 1 through 6 .txt. Each file is a chapter, it’s a pretty simple system. I could have gotten a calculator or pasted all the files together or something, and that’d be fine now, but I’m sure I’ll want to count the words again. So I went looking for an app to do it. The best I found was a line counter, which is just close enough to what I want to be entirely useless.

Next best option? Write it! So I did, real quick in C++ with lots of invocations of boost. The app is at http://www.omnisu.com/files/wc.zip Inside, you’ll find ‘wc.exe’ and ‘WordCount.cpp’. If you don’t know C++, well, ignore WordCount.cpp - but the source is there, just in case you do know C++ and want to peek. The source is 140 words long!

The usage is pretty simple : wc <mask>, where <mask> is a regular-expression used to match filenames. If you don’t know regular expressions either, well, you might have some trouble using it. But this should help. If you want to count all the .txt files in a directory, use the command ‘wc .*\.txt’ For my files, I happened to use ‘wc [0-9]\.txt’

Oh look, the source is also here. D:!

#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>
#include <string>
#include <boost/filesystem/operations.hpp>
#include <boost/filesystem/path.hpp>
#include <boost/regex.hpp> 

bool is_whitespace(char a)
{
	return (a == ' ' || a == '\t' || a == '\n' || a == '\r');
}

int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
	boost::filesystem::path dir_path( boost::filesystem::initial_path() );

	if ( argc <= 1 )
	{
		std::cout << "\nusage:   wordcount [mask]" << std::endl;
		return 0;
	}

	boost::regex expression(argv[1]);

	int word_count = 0;
	std::string word;

	boost::filesystem::directory_iterator end_iter;
	for ( boost::filesystem::directory_iterator dir_itr( dir_path ); dir_itr != end_iter;	++dir_itr )
	{
		std::string file_name = dir_itr->leaf();
		if (regex_match(file_name,expression))
		{
			std::cout << "Reading file " << file_name << std::endl;

			std::ifstream file(file_name.c_str());
			while ( file >> word) ++word_count;
		}
	}

	std::cout << word_count << std::endl;
	return 0;

}

Marri perched herself on the counter beside the till and cracked her father’s dusty copy of Myths and Histories open on her knees. Some strange banging had awakened her, she thought, but when she got up it had already passed, whatever it was. No one disturbed the silence this time of the morning, when the street lamps had burned out and the sun hadn’t come up. Marri couldn’t sleep, most nights, and the morning often found her on the counter, or tucked tight into a corner of the common room, reading by candlelight.
She had heard all the tales of the Delfaran War, about courageous Deyja and treacherous Mimora, of course, but Marri enjoyed reading them herself. She traced her fingers down the staves, to keep her place among the runes between them. Her father had brought this book from Karpanaken, after she had already read it in the language of Lochway. They wrote different in Karpanaken, but she could struggle through the strange spellings and odd prepositions because she already knew the tale.
So it was that Deja went into the forest of Loshwein, where Mimra waited in hiding, and did not know she had bewitched Omsu; and Omsu led Deja’s armies against him, and struck down the king.
The kitchen door creaked. Marri looked up at Thrad, standing shirtless in the doorway. His pants dripped onto the floor, dark with water from the knee down.
“Guests should use the stairs over there,” Marri said, and pointed into the common room.
“What is that?”
Marri lifted up the cover of the book so he could see the title carved into it.
“Bunch of lies,” Thrad said. “Mimora take it.” He stepped around the counter and through the front door. The door swung back with a thump.
Marri closed the book and slipped off the counter. She padded through the kitchen. Her feet found Thrad’s wet boot prints. She avoided them, where she could see them, and noticed that someone had disturbed the panel between the cabinets. She stopped and examined it in the dim candlelight that managed to penetrate all the way from the bar counter. Had she just not put it back properly? She couldn’t remember. Marri looked inside. Nothing seemed disturbed, everything was there.
She plucked the figurine out and rubbed her fingers over it. Her fingers warmed, but just barely. She pushed down the warmth, until her finger tips prickled and turned blue. She darted out the back door, the figurine clutched in her hand, and looked down the ally toward the starlit street. Puddles made glittering patches on the paving stones. It must have rained quick in the few moments Marri had slept.
A trail of misted breath hung in the air and mingled with the first bits of mist that would coat the city before the sun rose. It led from the front door of the inn, across the porch, to the stables.
Marri stuck close to the stable wall, and crept to the corner. She peeked around, and when she did not see Thrad she continued to the stable door. One side hung open. Marri hid behind it and peered into the stable.
Kit sprawled across a pile of hay in the corner. Thrad stood by a stall and patted the head of his horse, which stretched over the wall. He was a shadow against a shadow. Thrad turned toward the door, and his eyes shone in the dark, yellow like cat’s eyes. Marri jerked back under cover and hoped she didn’t jostle the door.
Just checking his horse, she told herself. Thrad appeared through the doorway. He paused in the street, and glanced back toward the stable. Marri pushed herself deeper into the angle between the door and the wall and held her breath.
Thrad didn’t close the door, he left it and returned to the inn.
Marri jumped around the door and pulled it shut behind herself. She ran across the floor to the corner where Kit lay. Fresh horse dung clotted in the air, mixed with the scent of wet hay. She hoped what sloshed between her toes was mud. “Kit, get up.”
Kit didn’t, so she kicked him until he did. “What?” he demanded. “Red?”
“Get up.”
“What do you want?”
“The knight was out here.”
Kit looked around the stables. Marri wondered how he could see anything.
“He’s not here now,” she said.
“You put it back, didn’t you?” Kit went to the door. He paused a moment in the muddy spot and said something to himself. Thatch, Marri thought she heard, and a swear word that reddened her cheeks whenever her mother was in a four block radius. Kit checked peeked out the door, then opened both sides all the way.
Mist rolled through the door and made swirls like waves crashing on a beach. The stars had faded and the sun splashed yellow across the eastern sky. The horses took notice and whickered softly at the dawn.
“I did. He was just checking his horse.”
Kit turned back toward her and stood framed in the dawn, on arm up against the door frame. “Why’d you kick me for?”
Marri clutched the figurine to her chest with both hands. “I wanted to check. I thought maybe he, what if he knew you took it, and. You know.” Her cheeks were red, she was sure.
“What’s that?”
Marri thrust the figurine toward him.
Kit took it and ran his fingers over it. “It looks like you.”
“No it doesn’t,” Marri said.
“The hair is red.”
“That’s just the color of the wood.” Marri snatched the figurine back. It grew hot in her hand. She felt the heat radiate up her arm, but barely noticed it against the heat in her cheeks.
“Where’d you get it?”
“I bought it.”
“With what?”
Marri worked the figuring around and around in her hand. Her arms blazed.
A grin crept onto Kit’s face and slowly exposed his teeth. “You stole it.”
“No!” Marri waved the figurine at him. “I bought it!”
“Thief thief thief!” Kit teased.
“No!” The heat in Marri’s arms burst from her fingers. Flames sprang around the figurine and her fingers. She gasped, she dropped it.
“Piss!” Kit shouted and stomped on the figurine. He ground it into the mud. Marri’s arms turned cold, her flesh pimpled. “You did that,” Kit said.
Marri looked away from his stare and shivered. Char drifted into the air. The figurine still smoldered, even buried in wet mud.
“You did it,” Kit said.
“You can’t tell. You mustn’t.”
“I won’t.” Kit bent and looked at the charred figurine. “Can you do whenever you want?”
Marri nodded.
“Can you show me?”
“Not here. Somewhere private.” Marri moved around him and darted for the door. She stopped and looked back at him. Thrad’s war horse stuck his head over the stall wall and whickered at them. Marri turned and ran for the inn.

“Mah-ree!” Sarah yelled. She stood at the back door of the inn looking tired and pouty. Water stained the knees of her dirty dress.
“I’m right here,” Marri said. “And that’s not my name.”
“Mahri mahri mahri,” Sarah spat. “I can’t turn the water.”
Marri pushed her out of the way. Sarah had a bucket crammed under the tap. She ran over in front of Marri and threw her weight onto the valve lever. It didn’t budge.
“See?”
“That’s because it’s already open.”
“But nothing comes out!”
Marri bent over and looked at the tap. A fired clay pipe stuck through the wall. It connected to a bronze valve with grease oozing from it’s seams. A stick or pole stuck in the top could turn it. Sarah had it all the way open already.
“Cause there’s no water, stupid.” Marri shoved open the kitchen door, already yelling “Mother!”
Mother stood over a table in the common room, attacking last night’s mess with a rag dirtier than the table. “There’s no water!” Marri shouted at her.
“Already? Summer’s barely started. Well take some jugs and your sister and go to the fountain in the square.”
“But..”
“Do it yourself then, I don’t care. Just do it.”
Marri let the kitchen door bounce against it’s frame. Sarah had her finger stuck up the tap. “You heard her, go get the jugs.” Marri kicked her to make her move, then she shut the tap. The pipes would start to stink in a day or so, with no water in them.
She mopped up the water on the floor while she waited for Sarah, glad for once that Sarah always took so long to do simple things. Sarah managed to spill everything, somehow. If the water hadn’t been out, Marri would have a real mess to clean up this time. The water didn’t want to come out of the crack between the floor and wall. Marri passed the mop along it again and again, but each time a bead of water seeped out. She stopped mopping and watched it as it slowly spread across the floor. How much water had Sarah spilled?
Marri pushed the panel between the cabinets aside. A inch of water pooled between the kitchen wall and the cistern. Light crept through a gaping hole in the wall of the cistern. Tar covered rocks piled under the hole, spread by the push of water.
Marri ran out to the stable. Kit shoveled hay out of a stall. Thrad’s horse stood outside it’s stall while Kit emptied it, and so did Thrad. Thrad buckled his saddle on himself. Marri watched him until he led the war horse out of the stable and swung up onto it.
“Knobs,” Marri said. She leaned into the stall and held her nose. “Come on.”
“What?”
“Come on.” Marri grabbed his elbow and dragged him out of the stall. She led him around the inn and into the kitchen. “There’s no water,” she said.
“So what?”
“So the cistern is empty! Look in there.”
Kit stuck his head through the panel. “There’s a hole in it.”
They climbed around the beams in the narrow space, and into the cistern itself. They stood in knee-deep water and stared up at the circle of sky four stories above them. Marri tried to count the pipes jutting from the walls, but lost her place less than a quarter of the way around the cistern.
A slab stuck out of the water near the wall. Marri sat on it and traced her fingers down the runes carved across it’s top. Green slime, still moist, clung to it. She recognized the symbols, but not the words.
Kit stood and looked at her, with his hands on his hips. “So you can do it anytime?”
“Yes,” Marri said.
“Do it now.”
Marri held out her hand. “It happens by itself sometimes. But I’ve never tried to before.” She wiggled her fingers.
“How does it work?” Kit leaned closer and peered at her fingers.
“My hands get warm. And then fire comes out.” Marri concentrated on the warmth. Her fingers tingled. “I always stop it, now. I never try to make it.”
Kit poked her finger. She giggled and fell back across the granite slab, and looked up at the sky. Drops fell from Kit’s feet as he climbed onto the rock and made trinkling noises where they hit the water. Marri held her hand up in front of her face and examined it against the sky.
She focused on her fingers. The tingling grew. It became heat. Her nails seemed to glow against the sky. Suddenly, a flame burst out between her fingers. She pulled the warmth back, the flame sputtered like a candle in the wind, but she kept it small and it didn’t burn.
“Knobs look!”
Kit rolled over and looked. He bounced up onto his knees and reached his finger toward the flame. It danced between Marri’s fingers.
“Careful it’s hot.”
Kit pinched the flame between his fingers. A tiny column of smoke erupted from it as it burned the oil of his fingers. The smoke clawed at their noses. Marri leaned forward on her hands, fingers splayed across the runes.
Kit waggled the flame on his finger and flicked it from finger to finger. The flame grew as it sucked fuel off his fingers, like a candle drawing up wax. “How do I put it out?”
“Stick it in the water I guess.”
Kit leaned over the side of the slab and lowered his hand toward the water. The flame spun around his fingers and licked up the back of his hand. He flicked it at the water. The flame tore up his bare arm and singed off his hair.
“Make it stop,” Kit said.
“I don’t know how to.”
The flame swirled around Kit’s arm. Kit flailed it in the air. “Make it stop!” His shout echoed back off the cistern walls. Kit dove forward off the slab and rolled in the water. The flames danced around him.
Marri leaned off the slab but jerked back away from the steam. Kit flailed in the water. The flames tore all around him and ate his flesh despite the water and steam. He screamed.
“I can’t! I can’t!” Marri shouted back, louder and louder to hear herself over the roar of fire and death. She reached for the flames, she flailed at them, and they danced just beyond her reach and laughed at her.
Kit lay on the bottom of the pool. The water boiled and churned above him. Steam rose around Marri. She dug her fingers into the runes on the slab. Flame danced in the steam as the fire consumed the water itself, then licked up the stone walls.
The fire swooped over Marri’s head like diving gulls.

Shen continued to hammer his heels against the crate even after his father told him to stop. Jamear drifted up and down the dock, bribing officials. Once he bribed one, he had to bribe them all, but that knight had been very clear. No one could open this crate.
“Better show up soon,” Jamear muttered as he passed close. “Could of slept in a bed last night instead of been out here throwing away my profit margin.”
“You’re going to sleep at the inn?”
“Of course I am.” Jamear stopped pacing to peer at him. “Don’t you start getting any ideas. You’re going there too.”
“She isn’t my mother.”
“You’re to treat Meredith like she is. And your sisters will be happy to see you.”
Shen looked at his feet instead. He knew his step mother only from a few faded memories and these brief visits, every three months or so. He knew the wenches in Pryley and Karpanaken better. He was eight when Jamear took him on the ship. Five years at sea had turned him into a man, if he would just grow some more. How old was Marri when he left? Four? Why should he care if she was happy?
The knight arrived. Shen recognized Sir Thrad. A few more tears in his mandilion let his chain mail show, and he had a sword instead of a hammer, but Shen couldn’t forget that unnatural skin, that let all Thrad’s veins out like rivers drawn on a map.
Thrad led his horse and two ponies onto the dock. Shen dropped off the crate to take the reigns, but Thrad put the reins from the ponies into the horse’s mouth instead. The horse worked his teeth around on the reins and actually stood there and held them.
Thrad stepped around the crate. He paused to run his hand over one spot, and examine a chip in the wood. Jamear stood off to the side.
“Open it,” Thrad said.
“What?” Jamear said. “You wanted it here untouched, it hasn’t been.”
“It’s here now, open it.”
Shen stared at the horse until Jamear jabbed him. “Wake up. Go get a crowbar.”
Shen darted down the dock to the sailors unloading cargo and snatched a pole from them. Jamear thrust it in the seam between the crate and it’s lid. The nails squeaked as they came out of the wood. They stuck, just before they popped, so that each nail sprang from the crate like a cork from a bottle.
The lid clattered onto the dock. Jamear tossed the pole down on top of it. Shen darted in, before they could tell him otherwise, to peer into the crate.
Straw, mostly wet now, filled it nearly to the brim. Thrad dug into it and heaved great handfuls out of the crate, heedless of where it landed. A stone tablet emerged, slowly, from the bottom. It was the size of Shen’s head and covered in runes. He recognized the alphabet, but not the words.
Thrad lifted the tablet out and turned it around in his hands. “Made it here in one piece. It’s been a pleasure, Captain.”
Jamear grunted. “You didn’t bring a wagon.”
“No need,” Thrad said. He stowed the tablet in his saddle bags. “It will be safe right here.”
Thrad walked off the dock, and his horse turned and followed him without being led.
“Lars!” Jamear shouted. Shen watched the knight go. The tone of Thrad’s boots changed as he crossed from wood to stone. “Lars! Keep her tight! No penetration, you understand? Come on Shen.”
“I’d..”
“No arguing. You’re going to the inn.”
Shen followed his father. He kept a few paces between them so maybe he could feel like he walked alone, if only for a moment. They followed the docks for a while, around the curve of the bay. The Basilica grew larger and grander until they came right up against it’s wall. Shen lost site of Thrad in the crowd as they passed through the square.
The merchants were inn, from the ships and the road, and stalls and tents squatted around the gallows forming a network of twining paths like the braided streams in a river delta. They setup every morning, except holidays, and packed up again every night. You couldn’t find the same stall two days in a row except by searching the entire square again.
“Don’t skulk,” Jamear said.
Shen grunted something just to appease his father. Why shouldn’t he skulk? He was the one being dragged from his home, the ship, to see his whore of a stepmother. Marri had the same limp red hair as they did, but that younger one, she had golden curls and not a freckle on her. Why couldn’t Jamear see that the little brat wasn’t his?
A strange smell creeped into his nostrils. Shen puckered his nose at it. He took his eyes off the cobbles. Thick smoke flowed over the city. “Fire!” someone shouted, not far away. Almost immediately they were pressed from all sides. Merchants hurried to pack their wares.
Jamear grabbed Shen’s arm and dragged him through the crowd. Elbows and knees buffeted him. Shouted names and orders and Fire! again and again all competed to be heard over the roar of flame. Suddenly they burst from the throng onto empty street.
The buildings around them bulged at their seams like a badly darned sail. Flame sputtered through their windows and lapped across brick and stone in search of fresh fuel. The heat sucked the moisture from the air, and the ash clawed at Shen’s throat until every breath was like swallowing sand.
“Go back to the ship!” Jamear ordered.
Shen didn’t heed him, but followed him up the street instead. Shen ran to keep up, with his arm held up to keep the soot out of his eyes. He saw something, a pattern in the flames, out of the corner of his eye, and had to look again to be sure. Flames crawled over the face of a row house. They swirled together in a tube. The tube kept it’s shape as it moved across the bricks, like a fire snake, except it had limbs. Shen kept moving as he watched the fire snake.
The snake paused. It clung to the frame of four different windows and looked straight at Shen. It’s head tracked him as he ran down the street, it’s swirling fire eyes never blinked. Shen could not pull his eyes away. He was drawn into the fire snake’s gaze, until suddenly something streaked across the space above them. A plume of flame leaped from the roof of a combination tavern and book store and arced across the street. Wings spread from the head of the plume and it opened a beak to shriek. The tone drove into Shen’s bones, and the fire bird dove into the snake, and both vanished into a tangle of flame.
Shen turned, spurred to new speed. He raced to catch up to Jamear who had gotten well ahead. He tried to ignore the giant cat that paralleled him along the roof tops. He glanced, once, in search of the source of the hoof beats pounding the cobbles behind him and did not look again. A horse and a stag ran abreast, each with a long tail of flame trailing behind them.
Fire bubbled from the top of the cistern like a pot boiling over and flowed down over the inn. Shen’s step mother stood in the street, with Sarah’s curly head pressed into her stomach. Both were covered in soot, with fainter patches where they had rubbed at their eyes. Shen heard them from farther away than he had expected, over the fire.
“Marri!” Meredith yelled. Tears traced lines in the soot on her cheeks.
Jamear ran to them, and grabbed Meredith’s arm and pulled her around. Meredith did not recognize him immediately, overwhelmed by the fire perhaps.
“Where is she?” Jamear asked.
Meredith stared, her mouth unmoving.
“Momma!” Shen heard, faint. And then again, “Momma!”
“Did you hear that? Jamear! Father!”
Jamear turned, surprised that Shen was there.
“She’s inside. I heard her.”
Jamear looked between Shen and the burning inn, then took his coat and held it over his face. “Keep them safe,” he told Shen, then plunged into the fire.
Shen waited, unable to do anything but fidget. Meredith came over to him, with Sarah still clutched against her, and put her hand on his shoulder. Shen leaned into her and caught Sarah looking up at him, wide eyed and tear streaked.
“Shen!” Jamear yelled in his command voice. It cut through the wood and the fire. Shen ran toward the inn. “Shen!” Jamear yelled again, and Marri flew from a second story window. Her arms wheeled in the air as she fell. Shen got under her and caught her, and they collapsed onto the hard cobbles with no hurts but a few bruises.
Jamear stood framed in the window for a moment, and then the inn crumbled. The third floor fell into the second, and the second into the first, and the entire inn into a pile of burning timbers on the ground. Embers sprang into the air and drifted around them like stars falling out of the sky. Shen felt them sizzle against his skin. The fire swelled over the inn, and Shen saw the fire snake crawling through the rubble consuming the wood, while the others watched and the fire bird wheeled in the air overhead.
Marri hugged him. “I can’t stop it,” she said. “I can’t stop it. Can’t stop it,” again and again.

On the matter of Internet assholes, few are more endearing than the hostile asshole. Under no occasions should this asshole be engaged in debate, though, you needn’t worry much about this as it is actually not possible to debate with this fool. This asshole is incapable of reasoned discourse. He is an arrogant, narrow-minded, pseudo-intellectual literalist with an inferiority complex. He is rude and belligerent. He will not respond to your attempts at engagement with rebuttals or reason, instead he will tell you how you like masturbating to telle-tubbies while puppies shit on your face. Which you don’t.

When called out, this asshole retreats behind the wall of his own assumed superiority. He dares not challenge you, because he’s only shooting blanks.

You got a critique. Now what? I have no idea at all how to start this article. So I think I’ll start it with the word funicular.

Funicular.

Know why you want a critique. If you just want praise, go ask your mother to read it. You get a critique to improve your writing. If you aren’t prepared to be told, in detail, exactly where you fail, don’t ask for a critique.

Definitely do not take a critique personally. They aren’t insulting you, they’re trying to help you. It’s a compliment that they even gave you the critique!

But do ask for clarification. If you don’t understand what they mean, ask them. Don’t be afraid of seeming defensive. The only people you will offend are the ones who’s critiques won’t help you.

And don’t be defensive. No one will critique you if you attack them.

Never challenge a critique. You don’t have to take their advice, it’s not an argument, winner take all. If you don’t agree, the best thing you can do is nothing.

But do consider every piece of advice. Don’t ignore someone just because you don’t like them, or think they are stupid. Even a fool can have an insight.

Just remember that a lone critique is worthless. If one person says something is wrong, one person doesn’t like it. If ten people say something is wrong, something is wrong. Look for patterns in your critiques first, and specifics second.

Always fix your mistakes before you ask for a critique. No matter how many times you say “I know about X”, someone will come along and say “X.” If you know about it, fix it before you ask!

And finally, write for yourself first. Write to be understood second. Write to be read third. Write for critics last. If you have time.

So what do I do with a critique? I go through a few simple steps in my head. First, I ask myself “Why does he think that?” A good critiquer won’t just tell me what, he’ll tell me why too. Next I ask myself “What if?” What if I took his advice? What if I made those changes? If I like the result, if I think it’s better, I’ll make changes. If I don’t, I won’t.

Getting a critique is an analytical process. Approach it with logic and reasoning, not emotion, and you’ll be able to pump every bit of self improvement out of the process.

I have a lot of old writing before the current draft. I’ve got a bunch of short stories and two previous drafts to draw from, and some of it is actually good, if entirely useless. It’s nice to see that I have, actually, improved.

Sprit squatted in the dirt outside his tent. The tent flaps waved in the steady west wind. It brought cold air and the promise of an early winter. Sprit rolled his bones around in his hand, enjoying the way they felt against his palm.
Sprit threw the bones in the dirt and studied how they fell. They were his best bones, his most powerful, his most accurate. They were the finger bones of a child. He threw them with his right hand, because his left had only two digits. He scowled at the bones. They made no pattern at all that he could see. No matter how many times he threw them, he saw nothing. Was the failing with him, or with his bones?
A shadow fell over the bones, and Sprit did not have to look up to know it belonged to his grandson. And why should he? He was old. Old enough to be named the right way, in the old tongue. Bomenisprit, it meant Speaks With Trees.
“Boy,” said Sprit, “Aren’t you going on your name quest soon?”
His grandson nodded. Sprit only saw the boy’s shadow move. He was fifteen, and still called boy. Or Hare, by the boys his age. But all those boys had already gone, when they were thirteen or fourteen, and now they also called him boy. Even the few who had names and were younger.
“And you have come to ask me to bless you?” Sprit asked. “A general spell of safety, perhaps?”
“It would make my mother happy.”
“And your father furious. And you too, I know.” Sprit gathered up the bones and threw them again. “Where will you go?”
Boy squatted down in the dirt. “The forest.” He continued, as if he had to justify the decision. “Father went there. And so did you.”
“The witch’s wood.”
“Yes,” Boy said. “Are you throwing bones for me?”
Sprit snatched up the bones and stuffed them into their gold embroidered bag. “Something troubles the witch.”
“The bones told you that?”
“No, stupid boy. She told me that.” Sprit pushed himself to his feet and moved to his stool where he could stretch his legs. “With the way the wolves have begun to howl the entire night, and with the wind that blows endlessly from the west, pushing winter on us. Let me tell you a story.”
“Is this going to be how you got your name again?” Boy asked.
“No,” Sprit said. “And I did more with that dryad than I ever told you. It’s about the witch.”
“How she steals children and gives them to Mimora?”
“Winan never did that. That’s her name, boy. If you’re going into her wood, that’s what you’ll call her. Don’t call her witch unless you want her to prove it to you.”

Jash lay awake, with his eyes tightly closed. The howling wind traced the contours of the inn. He could see it clearly, the inn, the cistern, and the aqueduct above it. Before he had lain down, he had taken a rag and wet the floor in the hallway, and all through the room he shared with Thrad. The knight snored, one hand dangling towards the floor. The other clutched his sword.
The water soaked into the wood, and when Marri stepped down the hall Jash felt it. Her footsteps were like ripples in a pond. She stopped, just outside the door. Jash shifted his focus. His heart thumped, it glowed brightly, seemed to float outside his chest. Thrad cast a fainter light, deep in sleep. A spot outside the door brightened, Marri’s blood betrayed her contour, like fire licking through her veins.
The door opened, just a crack, and Marri peered in. Jash did not move, he was sound asleep. Marri stepped silently into the room. Jash felt every touch of her bare feet against the floor. She stopped by the bed stand and opened the top drawer. The cold spot in her hand, that must be the purse. She lowered it half way into the drawer, then stopped and looked at it. She worked her fingers between the laces. Jash dared to peek.
Suddenly her hands blazed. Jash nearly leapt off his cot, his hands clentched on the sides to hold himself down. The fire raced up her arms. Jash could almost feel the heat leaping from her, and then it was replaced as quickly by cold. Marri shivered. She grabbed a coin from the top of the purse, and closed and dropped it in one motion, and fled from the room. She had the presence of mind to not slam the door.
Jash slipped off his cot and padded to the door. Marri remained clear in his mind. He waited until she vanished down the kitchen stairs then followed. Marri paused to pull on slippers then left the inn.
Salt hung heavy in the night air. Marri vanished from Jash’s senses as he let the distance between them lengthen. He focused instead on the coin clutched in her first. A gold Karpaneken crown. He would have Thrad change them for the local currency, if they planned on staying longer. Once he found it, it shone like a torch in his mind. He rubbed every coin they had, so he could track them. Not that he tuned to it, he could see everything he had touched. A glowing path led down the street, the same path he had ridden that morning.
He had not been in South Port long, so there was not much to distract him from the coin. Somewhere out at sea a faint spot glowed. It moved closer, sailing into the bay, Jash thought.
Marri stopped moving. Jash paused around the corner from her and peeked around it. She stood in front of a stall. The merchant’s good still sat on the counter, didn’t he sleep? Jash crept closer, avoiding the pockets of light cast by the street lamps.
Marri banged on the counter. Finally, the merchant responded. Jash could not yet hear them. The merchant grumped something, and lit a pipe. Marri brandished the coin at him.
“Well,” the merchant said. “Never let it be said Cromger doesn’t keep his word.”
Marri exchanged the coin for a little statue and a few copper pieces. Her fingers glowed when she touched it.
Jash followed her back to the inn. He had never seen a reaction so strong. First, when she touched the purse, again with the statue. He watched her hide it behind a panel in the kitchen, and after she went upstairs, presumably to bed, he pushed the panel aside. The statue sat among other artifacts of Marri’s childhood, off the floor in the corner of two beams.
Jash ran his fingers over it, but felt nothing. Nothing at all. It was just a piece of wood, as far as he could tell. If he reached deep enough, he could feel the person who carved it, but he could already tell that date was so far removed as to be irrelevant. Jash placed the statue back in Marri’s stash. He glanced up, past it, through the panel in the inn’s kitchen, at the cistern’s wall.

Jash brushed his fingers down Thrad’s arm. The knight was immediately awake, Jash saw his eyes move suddenly under their lids, and his knuckles tighten on his sword, but Thrad did nothing else to betray himself.
“There’s no danger, get up,” Jash said. He pulled items out of the saddle bags. Linen and charcoal, he put them in a pouch and tied it around his belly, under his shirt. A dirk he strapped to his thigh.
Thrad sat up and allowed himself the luxury of a stretch.
“I think I’ve found my way into the Basilica.”
Thrad grunted and rose. He picked up his sword belt.
“No, bring the hammer instead.”
Jash led the way downstairs, into the kitchen. He opened the panel, and crawled in. Thrad handed in his hammer, and squeezed through behind him.
A long curved hall waited for them on the other side. Support beams crossed it at irregular heights, forcing them to duck and twist through it. The chimneys from the inn’s kitchen took a chunk out of the space.
“When they built the cistern, they needed a way to get inside,” Jash said. “The ducts it drains into are too small. If they were any bigger there wouldn’t be enough water pressure.”
“What’s that have to do with crawling around behind walls?”
“They sealed these access holes up, obviously. And then they built things right up against it.”
“Except this inn, which was built four feet away.”
“Exactly,” Jash said. “Maybe they had to make repairs at one point, and the inn building here paid the price. When they rebuilt, they made sure there was access to the cistern.”
They came to a gap in the curving stone wall, where the stones didn’t match. Tar covered their joints. Extra support beams, angled into the ground, supported the wall all around the patch.
Thrad rested his hammer against the ground and rubbed his hands together, then positioned his grip on it. “This is going to flood the inn.”
“It’s built off the ground. The street, maybe. Worry about waking them first.”
Thrad hefted the hammer. “Stand back.” He swung, the hammer smacked against the stones and rang like a bell. The tar hid any damage. Thrad swung again, and water seeped around the stone he had hit. On the third swing, a jet of water shot across the space and struck the far wall.
Thrad’s fourth strike crumbled the wall on contact. Water poured out in a deafening torrent and surged around their feet, sweeping away the dust and rat droppings.
Jash climbed through the hall and splashed into the knee deep water on the other side. He looked up at the end of the aqueduct, now only a few feet above his head instead of twenty feet under the water. It curved suddenly before it joined the cistern. The pipe came in near the top, then dropped straight down, before bending again to flow into the cistern. Presumably to keep someone from doing what he was about to.
Green slime clung to the walls and panicked frogs darted around in the suddenly shallow water.
“Wait for me at the north gate,” Jash said. “We’ll have to leave quickly. And go by the docks and pick up the tablet.”
Thrad leaned through the hole and looked around. “The ship arrived?”
“It’s docking now.” Jash leapt and grabbed the edge of the pipe and pulled himself into it. He could crawl in it, but his back touched the top. “And get another pony.”
“For who?”
“The inn keeper’s daughter.”
“The little one or the red one?”
“Red. I’ve never felt a power that strong, and she was repressing it. I can’t imagine what she would be if she let it out. You can manage that, right? Just try and get her to come peacefully before you kidnap her.”
“Don’t keep me waiting,” Thrad grunted. He vanished into the passage between the cistern and the inn.

“Laterns out!” Jamear shouted from the stern.
Shen jumped. He had positioned himself by the bow, knowing that order would come. But then he nearly fell asleep, and instead of his lantern going out first it went out last. He rubbed at the dent the ship’s railing left in his cheek as darkness swept over the little ship.
The eight-man crew scurried around the ship, pulling down some sails and raising others with only starlight to guide them. Shen stayed out of their way, Jamear got right in among them. On a ship so small, the captain did as much work as any other crewman, and then some.
“Shen!” Jamear shouted.
Shen darted forward. His father walked a bit of a line. He was the captain, he couldn’t treat Shen different than any other crewman. But in the dark, with this crew of men that had sailed and fought together for years, Shen only got in the way.
“Shen!” Jamear shouted. “Up!” He pointed up the high mast, at the crow’s nest swaying over the deck.
Shen scrambled up the rope ladder. On the surface, the ship barely swayed at all. Up here, Shen whipped from side to side. He wrapped one arm tight around the mast and planted his feet wide on the platform. Shen hung far out over the ocean at each end of the arc.
The lighthouse on the end of Cape Kwal, invisible from the deck, shone over the waves. Shen pointed towards it, and held his arm stiff. His father would use his arm to steer. Sure enough the boat shifted and aimed to the right of the lighthouse. They had to cut close to avoid the chain of rocky islands that guarded the bay, but not so close that the ship struck the cape itself.
“Oars!” Jamear shouted.
Shen spared a moment to glance down, at the oars sliding out through the gun ports. The sailors sang to keep their rhythm.

The sea is where I’m meant to be,
I’ll dance with the kraken and like it too,
I’ve got a wife in every port,
and a bunch of mates with the same tattoo.

The sea is where I’m meant to be,
I’ll go on land for wine and girls,
But if I have to die I’d rather have
the sea than a girl between my knees.

The lighthouse slid past on their left, and the crew hushed. The oars cut through the water with barely a whisper. Jamear braced himself against the wheel. Now they passed from the rough sea into the churning between the cape and the rocks.
“All silent,” Jamear said. His voice, just a whisper, carried easily over the ship. They were in the most danger of discovery during these moments. The ship lurched in the twisted waves. Shen wrapped both arms around the mast as it shook him back and forth.
And just as quickly, it was over. The lighthouse receded behind them, and now Shen could see, with the blaring light gone, the city of South Port stretched around the bay. It shone like someone had taken the stars out of the sky and scattered them across the ground.
Shen scanned the docks. Each dock had a lantern on it’s end, and he could make out the ships by the lanterns on their sterns. He glanced down, and was aware of Jamear staring up at him. As they got closer, the water got smoother, and Jamear would be able to see for himself, but by then it would be much more difficult to change their course without being seen.
Shen found an empty dock and pointed, careful to keep his arm aimed straight towards it no matter how the ship twisted. The water turned smooth as a pond on a stagnant summer day. Two crewmen left their oars to lower the last of the sails, and the ship glided across the water with only the soft splash of the oars to betray it.
They hit the dock, just barely. It scraped down half the length of the hull before the sailors pushed the Marrigold off with their oars. Then Shen was the first onto the dock, sliding down a rope from the crow’s nest. He slung his rope around a pylon and pulled it tight before another man landed beside him.

The pipe closed around Jash. The bottom was slick, but the slope was negligible. A tiny ball of witch light floated in front of him and filled the pipe with a faint green hue, but there wasn’t anything for Jash to see. He let his senses float out around him, until Thrad burned in his consciousness. The faint spot from the sea, now sitting on a dock, converged with Thrad and both moved towards the inn.
From these references, he could tell where he was. The wind defined the Basilica, Thrad marked the level of the ground. Jash crawled for hours, though it could not have been more than half of one. The pipe ended abruptly in a sharp turn, three feet of vertical pipe, and open air. Jash snuffed the witch light between his fingers. It shattered into a thousand tiny stars that drifted down into the slime. Jash squirmed out of the pipe and onto the Basilican roof.
The roof sloped gently at the edges, then shot up in a dome. Stained glass panels in the dome glittered in the morning sun. A wood framed walkway surrounded the building, tucked behind stone battlements. Jash emerged half way between two towers. He picked one and darted towards it, frightening a group of gulls that wheeled away, screaming, into the air.
The tower door had no lock. Jash grabbed the door by the iron ring set level with his eyes and pulled it open just far enough to peer inside. Darkness, and a tiny streak of light, cast through an arrow slit. He found a dead torch, stuck in a bracket on the wall, and summoned a touch of fire to light it. Jash carried it into the bowels of the Basilica.
Jash had expected more resistance, but it seemed the Basilica was more palace than fortress now. The few guards he saw walking the halls were easily avoided. Jash stuck to the servant’s halls. He paid attention to the floor. He saw where scuffs vanished under walls, and he found the hidden doors the servants used to come and go so quickly. He abandoned the torch. Once he left the tower, the halls were well lit.
Jash stuck his head into a hallway. Two guards stood flanking a doorway. Gold lamps stood opposite them, atop a procession of polished marble stands. The guards wore full plate armor with gold trim, heavy and useless. Jash slipped silently into the hall and shut the hidden door behind himself. He pressed against the wall and wrapped light around himself. Just enough power, applied just the right way, to render him invisible if he didn’t move too fast. So long as the guards didn’t look straight at him.
They didn’t. The closest guard noticed him when Jash bumped against his elbow, but by then it was too late to stop Jash’s dirk from stabbing upward through his throat. The guard gurgled and blood filled his mouth and leaked between his lips. The second guard drew his sword, but all he saw was a blur killing his companion. He didn’t know where to strike and never did. Jash jabbed him between the joint of his armor at his groin, the cut of his scream by cutting his throat.
Jash pushed the doors they guarded open. This room had windows, tall stained glass windows that depicted a sword battle. Jash smirked when he recognized the figures. Mimora and Deyja, but Mimora never used a sword. A curtained bed squatted between the windows bathing in the morning sun. The figure silhouetted against the curtains shifted.
“So you’ve come to kill me at last,” the figure said.
“On the contrary,” Jash said. He stepped up to the bed and opened the curtains. The king of Lochway, Valan, lay before him, shrunken and decrepit, his body eaten by disease. “It is vitally important that you live.”
Valan laughed, then coughed.
“You’ve not lived up to your name very well, Valiant Valan.”
“If this is a ploy, boy, it has already failed. So long as my blood lives no Delfaran will be welcome in Lochway.”
“No ploy.” Jash leaned over Valan and touched his forehead, then felt his pulse. “Your daughter must not be Queen. She will reign over the unmaking of this world.”
“So kill us both.”
Jash summoned fire and laced it through Valan. Valan writhed and tangled his sheets, spittle flew from his mouth in fans. Finally he lay still, his chest heaved.
“You will live,” Jash said. “A little longer now than you would have.”
“What do you want, Magi?”
“From you?”
Valan grabbed Jash’s collar with his reinvigorated hand. “Magi don’t give gifts.”
Jash grabbed Valan’s arm. The old man pulled him closer. “I want the tablet,” Jash said. “The tome of Deyja, that your ancestors removed from his tomb.”
Valan released Jash and sagged back to his bed, all his energy expended in that brief burst. “He looks over me still.”
Jash lurched back away from the bed. His eyes darted around the room, until he spotted it. Words adorned the keystone of the arch above the door. The language of the ancients, the language of Delfara. Jash snatched his parchment from under his shirt. He yanked a dresser to the door with air, heedless of the glassware that scattered, tinkling, across the floor. Jash climbed the dresser and pressed the parchment against the stone, and passed his nugget of charcoal across it until he had a complete impression of the characters.
Then he felt the power. An outpouring of fire, somewhere within the city. And something else. Another element, but not one he recognized. Valan swung his legs from his bed. Already, his frame looked fuller. Jash could almost feel the heat on his skin. In that same moment, the Basilica bells began to ring. So loud in the city, they were deafening inside the Basilica itself.